Books: A Sahara of Ice

THE LAST KINGS OF THULE by Jean Malaurie Translated by Adrienne Foulke
Button; 489 pages; $25.75

In 1818, British Explorer John Ross arrived in Greenland and gave Arctic
nomads their first good look at a qallunaaq, a "big eyebrows." In turn,
Ross and his seamen gazed on squat Asians wearing bearskin pants.
Outsiders called them Eskimos, a derivation from the derogatory Cree
Indian word meaning "eaters of raw meat." They simply called themselves
Inuit, human beings, a distinction born not of racial arrogance, but
of fact. For centuries, the only other walking mammals that...